Monitoring

Collecting accurate statistics on obesity and tracking the success of efforts to address it are vital to prevention and treatment and adequate data are lacking in several countries. During a ministerial summit in 2006, the first European ministerial summit on a single disease, all European ministers of public health promised increased attention to monitoring obesity rates. In addition, the International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF), which is part of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, has said the evaluation of interventions is a crucial step in tackling the obesity epidemic.